elections. >> good morning everyone. thank you, bob, for that introduction and thank you all of you for coming out early this morning for what i think will be a lively debate. we are going to be asking the question if democracy is to triumph in the middle east, victories at the ballot box are inavoidable and essential. this is the motion we will be debating in the intelligence-squared format per requests from our panelists who have done this once already -- they have had a practice round. they have not had a chance of doing this, but i suspect, had probably had several scotches and talked about ways to defeat their foes. we know that this is a time of revolution in the middle east. it started with a fruit sell seller in tunisia and toppled a 230-year dictator that spread to egypt and the egyptian revolution was concern to the united states. egypt has long held incredible importance to u.s. policy in the middle east. the u.s. reaction to that revolution was unclear. there were some that said this